When Betsey returns to the ER for a second visit, the concerned Oceanside doctors start investigating the foster family. Amelia struggles to stay sober while Naomi announces a life changing decision affecting her family.

David Hinckley

Private Practice at first glance looks like it's about to die. But by the end of its premiere tonight it has miraculously come back to life, apparently without even the aid of a tall, handsome, mysterious script doctor.

Aaron Barnhart

I was disappointed by the opening episode, which left me with the distinct impression that Taye Diggs (playing a newly divorced doctor in the practice) and Tim Daly (Walsh’s first love interest on the show, but I’m sure not the last) were simply working off their ABC contracts that began on other, now-canceled shows. The portrayals of alternative medicine were unfortunate and too much forced zaniness.

Rob Owen

Mike Duffy

Even with Walsh's star sizzle and an attractive, talented supporting cast that includes Tim Daly, Amy Brenneman, Taye Diggs and Audra McDonald, Rhimes still hasn't found her spinoff's storytelling groove

Ellen Gray

The good news is that the show's first non-"Grey's" episode is a decided improvement and recaptures the sense of humor that the mothership seemed to lose last season. The bad news is that as a medical show, it's so predictable that anyone who's watched any David E. Kelley show in the past 15 years or so, from "Chicago Hope" to "Boston Legal," will see certain plot points coming a mile (or two) away.

Alessandra Stanley

The premiere showcases seven different women, doctors and their patients, in various states of anger, insecurity and neediness. It’s like a Hogarth engraving of the seven stages of womanly despair, “A Surgeon’s Progress.”

Ken Tucker

The pleasure to be extracted from Private Practice--well, not so much pleasure as cringey curiosity--resides entirely in trying to figure out what's really going on inside the actors' heads as they skip through this latest Adults Are the New Spoiled Brats fantasy from "Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes.